The Architecture of modern wireless networks allows radio access network (RAN) to interface with the Internet or other external networks via so called core networks.
A RAN can include multiple cells, wherein each cell includes a base station that communicates with multiple user devices. The base cell transmits downstream traffic to the user devices and the latter transmit upstream traffic to the base station. The bandwidth of the downstream traffic well exceeds the bandwidth of the upstream traffic.
The capacity of the cell can represent the amount of information that is exchanged between the base station and the user devices. Due to the asymmetry between upstream and downstream traffic the capacity can be regarded as the amount of downstream transmitted information.
The amount of downstream information can vary over time. It may be responsive to the status of the wireless medium (high interference level, high ambient noise), to the relative distance between the base station and each of the user devices and to the bandwidth transmission policy applied by the base station. For example—transmitting the same amount of information to a user device that is closer to the base station may require less resources (for example—by applying a more aggressive modulation scheme) than transmitting the same amount of information to a user device that is more distant from the base station or is otherwise located in a noisier location. Yet for another example—a maximum throughput policy may involve transmitting more information to closer user devices while an equal distribution scheme can transmit the same amount of downstream information to different users.
If the amount of traffic that is sent to the cell exceeds the cell's capacity then congestions may occur, traffic gets lost and there is a reduction in the performance of the cell.
There is a growing need to provide an efficient cell capacity estimation scheme.